How Can Netflix Improve Streaming?

You seem pretty happy with the image quality, but I've received a number of e-mails about the way Netflix streaming works:

Satya wants subtitles and better controls: "I hit the play button in my queue, downloaded Silverlight, and watched about 3 episodes of various shows. Issues: None of them had subtitles. Some searching on the internet revealed that Netflix is indifferent to this issue. There was little support for fast-forward (2x,4x play) or reverse. You can seek with the bar, but that's inadequate and error-prone. So... will Netflix ever address this, and how does it affect all those set-top boxes?"

Patrick wants more warning before streaming titles expire: "I find it frustrating that Netflix can't provide any better lead time for letting us know that movies will be expiring from the queue. For instance, I have Bram Stoker's Dracula and Storytelling in my queue, and suddenly this morning it says one is expiring March 1st of this year and the other is leaving March 6th."

John wants a bigger buffer: "Because the [Silverlight] buffer is 1mb, that means it's downloading 1mb worth of content, dumping it as it's watched, and perpetually downloading the next segment. So when I back it up to change scenes, I have to wait for it to download all over again. With the previous player, as I was watching the first few minutes, it would download the next few minutes and continue downloading until the entire show was cached. If I bounced around, it would pick it right up."

JP wants to know the aspect ratio before streaming: "It’s difficult to know whether to add a movie to the “watch instantly” queue or to the DVD queue because the watch instantly version can be any size (cropped) or quality, and the users do not know at the time of selection (for queuing up movies for watching on Roku or TiVo). If Netflix has cropped them to 4:3 as watch instantly streams, I’d add the movie to the DVD queue. In my cursory experience, roughly 50% of the movies have been cropped to 4:3 when streamed. Do you know or your readers know if Netflix is planning on adding this information to the watch instantly movie specification page or some other means of knowing in which queue to add a movie?"

I will echo the need for subtitles as well as better controls. I have a problem if I missed something and I need to "rewind", the streaming takes a while to catch up and I have turbo DSL. Also, maybe a widescreen viewer or HD quality.

i watch my streams exclusively through the Roku player so I'm not sure if some of these issues are on Netflix's end or on Roku's.

I have a really long streaming queue (~300 titles) which is extremely difficult to navigate, especially if some tiles in the middle are expiring. Better menu navigation, jump by 20 in addition to 1 and 3, would be nice. Or a different way to display titles to see more. Even just a list view with only names option would be nice.

I'd like an option that will automatically bump movies that are expiring to the top of the queue. If a streaming title is expiring soon I want it to be at the top of my queue so I notice it. It's not like my DVD queue where order matters. And if there's less than say, 4 days notice, the system should send an email.

And better buffering would be nice. Some days it tries really hard to give in 2 or 3 quality (out of 4 on the roku box) but it'll keep re-buffering. I'd like to force it to load at 1 sometimes just so i don't have to deal with the rebuffer lag.

I would just like a simple close button on the Streaming error screen. I use a virtual keyboard from my iPhone as the only keyboard, and when a movie ends Netflix pops up an error screen and the only way to leave it is to hit ESC. I'd love just a simple close full screen button on the error screen. They have it already while the movie is streaming. Why does it have to go away???

When you only have a mouse attached to your computer and not a keyboard, it makes it very difficult to get out of the full screen mode when an error pops up.

Before I get started, subtitles would be freaking awesome. I can live with stereo audio for now, but subtitles or closed caption support would make things far, far better. The one feature preventing my parents from getting a Roku is the lack of subtitles / closed caption. That said, here's what I really want.

I feel like browser streaming is a stop gap. It's something that works when you aren't at your TV. They seem to have made something good enough, but not great. The focus of streaming, evident with the involvement in the effort spent on the UI by Netflix team on the Roku, seems to be on integrating the service into the home theater.

I think Netflix have done a great job (both with their involvement in home theater devices and with web streaming) making a light-weight solution to something that could be very, very heavy. You probably don't want a gigs of movie sitting in memory when most of the time, you simply watch a movie straight through (maybe pausing occasionally). So, I can live with the fact I have to rebuffer if I rewind or fast forward. That's why the Roku can have so little memory and still work like a champ.

What I REALLY want out of streaming has nothing to do with the actual streaming. I want to be able to search for Watch Instantly titles FROM the device I'm using. I don't want to login to the website every time I want to find a movie to watch.

I could live with a browse categories (and sub categories) and a simple title search. It doesn't have to be crazy. I just want something better than logging into the website or using a not-quite-good piece of iPhone software.

Netflix can improve their streaming by not crashing my Series 3 HD Tivo. As it is, the streaming is worthless to me because I am not going to risk breaking my Lifetimed HD Tivo in order to watch a "free" movie.

I can pay Amazon, Jaman, and others to actually download a movie that won't cause my Tivo Series 3 to crash.

Netflix streaming and I have a love/hate relationship. I throughly enjoy a lot of the shows; HOWEVER, I lose connection at least once during every view. At first I thought it was my connection, but I have made it my goal to test various locations/connections. There is nothing more annoying than being three seconds from the climax and having a required break do to a changing internet speed, etc.

I would like to see an option where you can either prefer quick replay (the way it works today) or you can prefer high quality where the system will buffer a large amount before the viewing starts. It's really frustrating to watch a movie that is in good quality and about 5 minutes into the movie the streaming pauses to readjust the quality.

As far as quality of the streaming, I'm perfectly happy. I rarely have playback problems on the Roku or my MacBook. I sometimes get the occasional change of quality on the 360, but then I'm not fond of using the 360 for Netflix anyway; it's the loudest, most expensive, most power-hungry option for Netflix viewing.

I notice a lot of people on high-speed Cable Internet (Comcast, etc.) say they have buffering/stalling problems. I'm on 6mbps DSL, and I can't say I ever see major problems. I'd propose that your cable company is probably bottlenecking your connection when they see a large stream coming from Netflix's servers. They have declared they're competing with Netflix, and that would be the most effective way to drive you off Netflix in favor of On Demand or PPV.

I have issues with watching Office episodes, but only when shown in HD. It will pause every few minutes because presumably it is playing faster than I download it (just a guess). It works fine if the quality is less than HD. I'd like to be able to pause it and allow it to download ahead, or drop the quality down so as to view without issue. I use a 10MB line, so speed shouldn't be an issue for me. I am going over wireless however.

You have a valid point, and one that I can't argue without some serious packet sniffing (which at some point I'm willing to go into). My counterpoint is that many shows play just fine, while many others don't. And time after time I get sustained 6mb speeds from Speakeasy's speedtest. And, again, it worked quite well with the older player, and went downhill with the Silverlight player (though playback can seem to be of higher quality).

I still maintain the biggest issue with the drops and reloads is because of a 1mb buffer. Although someone else posted a comment that they'd rather have a smaller buffer (I don't know what the Roku uses), I think for a show or movie, even 50mb would be a huge improvement, although 500 would be excellent. Most folks watching streaming movies have got at least 50 mb free, if not 500. If we could manually assign the buffer space, we might find a number of issues disappear.

But if Comcast is doing that throttling crap, like other ISPs have been known to (an East-coast ISP with Vonage, for instance) or inserting random reset packets, then hopefully my problems will disappear once FiOS goes live in my neighborhood!

I'm generally pleased with the steaming but am puzzled by a few imperfections: Why is it that occasionally a video seems to have been digitized with the audio out of sync (if I'm not mistaken, this occurs with the last episode of The Office, Season 1, or maybe it's 30 Rock, and in one of the Sarah Silverman films). I'd also like to see more titles in HD. Is the holdup a contractual issue with the studios, or something more technical? Seems odd... Finally, I'd love to see more flexibility in the tiers for image quality. My internet regularly downloads at 1.4 mbps. My understanding is that I'm downloading Netflix at 1.2 mbps, and that the next tier would be 1.6 mbps. Why not have tiers at 1.3 and 1.4? The image and sound (which can be very tinny) would be that much better.

Don't give me this crap that the Netflix-Tivo thing is Tivo's fault. Like I said in my post, I have no problem with content from Amazon, Jaman, YouTube, and others.

Netflix's streaming service provides me ZERO additional benefit at this time. The extra $1 for Blu-Ray is another strike against them.

As it is, I am a Blockbuster Total Access subscriber at this time. I've been a long-time (6+ years) Netflix subscriber in the past, but my general feeling is if you don't speak with your feet Netflix won't listen to you.

Dual Monitor Support Please! I would like to be able to do Full Screen video on one monitor and still be able to use the computer via the other monitor! As it stands now, if you click ANYWHERE outside of the video it exits Full Screen mode :(

1. Add NATIVE support for the PS3, so that it doesn't require a Windows machine on the local network to run PlayOn.

2. Better buffering. In fact, I'd like to be able to select a certain number of programs and pre-buffer the entire video. (Basically, download it the night before, but the user wouldn't have access to the actual video file.)

They'd probably say this isn't an option. Why not? It's technically possible on any player with a few gigs of available storage, e.g. the PS3.

as far as ps3 support it's not that Netflix made an exclusive deal it's that sony is not interested in it. They have gone on record stating that their customers would rather own their content so they are going to focus on the Sony store and digital downloads through their own store.

I guess there are actually tons of people that make impulse buys on the playstation store and that probably adds up over time.

Something that I would like to see added is to do with the multiple profiles option. I own two xboxs 1 for living room and one in the kids room. I would like to add a second profile for my ques, not to let the kids pick out DVD's, but for them to have there own instant que with only kid friendly movies. As far as I can tell right now there is no instant que for the child profiles.

Yes I know that Xbox has family settings on it but these are inadequate as I have a lot of personal media on the hard drive i want the kids to have access to that isnt rated anything. So enabling ratings does no good as it blocks everything.

Netflix needs to fix the sleep/screensaver problem because my computer is set to automatically go to sleep for a reason and it makes it hard to watch movies comfortably while having to remember to move the mouse. IT could also use a bigger cache and better fast forward and rewind

You know I think a lot of people commenting on quality are still using the old player on Windows. I was one of those idiots who upgraded his player tonight accidentally only to find that I am unable to go back and that the new silverlight player is absolutely terrible looking on an HTPC connected to a 50" Plasma. Whereas before it looked like a good quality Divx or Xvid encode, now it looks like a low bitrate youtube clip.

Ironically, I just filled out Netflix' quality survey the other day telling them quality was great... yeah, great because I was still using the old player. As it is, without the ability to go back and all customers on the new player, they have lost a customer, plain and simple!

Please allow for us netbook users to have some sort of option here - I've not tried silverlight video on my netbook (1.6ghz atom based) but something tells me that it will probably be unwatchable like most flash video is.

Currently, the WMP-based streams work GREAT on my device. It would sure suck to be muscled into using a technology that would REDUCE my ability to enjoy my netflix streaming on-the-go. In fact, I use my netbook as my "home theater PC" so really it's the only way I enjoy my netflix streaming.

New technology isn't always better. I know the hordes of DRM zombies (read: movie and TV studios) want the latest protections but has there actually been a problem with people ripping the netflix streams? It doesn't make much sense as if someone really wanted to pirate the content, they would obtain it from a higher quality source. (BD or DVDrip, or HDTV recordings for TV shows)

The situation you have created with your silverlight based player is completely unacceptable.

At the beginning of the next billing cycle my family and I will be placing our account on hold until we see if this situation is addressed.

1) I was in no way notified that the quality of my relationship with netflix would be permanently modified, to my detriment, when I installed your "new player" one ONE of our PC based laptops.

2) The quality of the video stream provided by netflix has obviously decreased when using the silverlight player as compared to the the windows media based player. This has been verified by 6 people watching two "identical" streams on two laptops placed side by side both laptops were directly jacked into a corporate grade T3 line which was not being used. Furthermore your corporate blog confirms this difference in quality.

3) ...,"Sorry Sir but Tap-Tap no take back...even on your other machines..." While fairly pleasant to talk to and fluent in English your CSR basically gave the noted response to our inquiries as to a possible remedy to this situation. Now we are required to, "Upgrade" our other two laptops and desktop machines that use this account to stream movies. Upgrade for a downgrade in quality at the same price! Thanks netflix.

We have always been a huge fans of netflix and have 'pimped you' regularly to our friends and colleagues. We would often comment that as a corporation 'you' seemed to do the right thing. Perhaps the glory days are over and 'you' are simply to large and profitable. If so, congratulations on your graduation into the ranks of our other entertainment and communication providers, who we respect so much. (Heavy sarcasm intended.) Corporations such as Comcast and AT&T who continually screw us, with little or no notification, for a few extra bucks and a little less service.

it seems like every movie that is offered for streaming from STARZ PLAY is in the WRONG ASPECT RATIO !!!
Here's an idea for how to improve Netflix streaming: DUMP STARZ PLAY !
It's 2009.... What's up with all the cropped movies?
Dump it !

Feature I'd like to see. The ability to play a movie faster like 1.2X or 1.4X, The DVD software that came with my laptop can do this and it is great. Can watch a movie in less time. You don't even notice it at 1.2X